


and so we start again

by unraelated



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe, Divine Pulse Angst (Fire Emblem), Divine Pulse Deaths (Fire Emblem), Groundhog Day, M/M, Time Loop, brief mentions of Dimileth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26048575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unraelated/pseuds/unraelated
Summary: Dimitri knows Claude before he ever meets him.Claude has known Dimitri for longer.For Dimiclaude week, day 7: "Past and Future"
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 32
Kudos: 269





	and so we start again

The first time, Dimitri wins the war.

Claude's smile, infectious and both real and not real, lingers in the horizon. Dimitri tastes it in the wind, hears it when he sleeps at night. They meet again as kings and Dimitri holds true to his promise not to judge Claude too harshly.

He cares for the Alliance. He cares for the former Empire. He leaves flowers on Edelgard's grave and the next time Claude visits, he takes him to bed and thinks, _this is it_. Two fates, converging. This feels right. This is what is meant to be.

He asks Claude if he feels the same way and Claude just laughs his unreadable laugh of his and tucks his head against Dimitri's chest and whispers, "you're so dramatic, darling."

Nevertheless, it's how he feels.

They grow old apart, together, forging two countries and a romance in their careful hands. Byleth watches, smiles as they both go gray and retire together, somewhere far away, somewhere green, somewhere where Claude can point out all the stars in the sky and Dimitri can watch the way his eyes light up in familiarity.

Dimitri dies first, curled into Claude's arms. Claude follows him into inevitability several weeks later. 

But that is not the end of it.

-

The second time, Dimitri feels heavy, like there's a fog in his brain that can't quite clear. He sees Claude's face for the first time and thinks that he's dreamed about him, or that they somehow met when he was young. Claude smiles blithely at him and looks away. He doesn't know Dimitri either.

The deja vu doesn't dissipate. He still feels it, even through the pang of envy he feels when the new professor agrees to teach the Golden Deer. 

She turns back for a moment and catches his eye. Dimitri nods politely at her, conceding to her choice, but her eyes linger a little too long on his. He wonders why.

Dimitri forgets soon enough. Jeralt is killed. Edelgard declares her war. Part of him isn't surprised, but he pushes it away in favor of rage.

After the battle for Garreg Mach, he rushes back to the dorms to quickly pack. They need to flee and prepare a counterattack, but as he shoves his clothing in a bag, he sees a shadow at the doorway. 

"You don't have to do this," Claude, of all people, tells him.

Dimitri shakes his head quickly, pushing his schoolbooks away.

"I do." There's a pause and he grits his teeth. "The professor is gone. Rhea is gone. Faerghus needs to prepare a response for this treason."

Claude says nothing and Dimitri continues packing under his watchful eye, ignoring him. Dimitri thinks that he should be packing too, preparing to flee back to the Alliance, but he clearly is in no great rush.

After a long few moments, stretched thin like the gossamer strands of a spider's web, Claude finally steps inside of his room and closes the door behind him. Dimitri turns toward him, irritated, but - he looks different in this light. Like a prince. Like a king.

Why would he think that? Dimitri blinks and tries to clear his head, but Claude speaks quietly-

"The professor always comes back. You know that, right?" 

-and the room spins. 

Dimitri looks at Claude again and sees the king he'll be, and Claude offers a smile, softer and more sorrowful than any other smile Dimitri has seen from him. It's the kind of smile he remembers seeing when he was old and aching, and something in his heart goes decidedly still.

"I knew it," Claude whispers, stepping forward quickly, pressing a hand to Dimitri's arm. "I knew it wasn't just me. This time, it's you too."

"Claude…"

His touch is iron-hot and Dimitri wants to pull away, to tell him that he's mistaken, but he can't. Claude's eyes are bright, electric.

"Come with me."

It's still hazy, dreamlike. Dimitri doesn't think he knows what Claude thinks he does and the conversation has him confused, distracted from what is actually important.

Edelgard. The war. Faerghus.

Dimitri turns away, pulls back from the warmth of Claude's fingers and Claude takes a short step closer, alarmed by the refusal.

"- you won't win without the professor," he says and it comes out in a rush, too quick and too emotional to belong in Claude's thoughtful mouth.

"I don't care what you think."

Claude's lip is bitten, his fingers twitching like he wants to reach for him again but he knows better now. Dimitri is lost to his rage - perhaps he always will be.

His bag is packed. Dimitri turns to go but Claude is standing in front of the door. Now, he just looks like a boy, his cheeks too round, his eyes too large, his heart too vulnerable. Dimitri doesn't know how he ever saw a king.

"Move."

Claude's expression is disarming as he looks at him, taking in every angle and shade of Dimitri's face, as if committing it to memory. Dimitri is already impatient and he's about to reach up to shove Claude out of the way, but the other boy finally moves of his own accord, his shoulders slumped, defeated.

"This is the last time I'll ever see you," he says.

Dimitri doesn't know what that means.

Five years later, as he bleeds out alone and defeated on the battlefield, his blurred vision catches sight of a wyvern in the sky and he thinks, _liar_.

-

The third time, he’s more sure. The memories are less blurry. Claude smiles when they’re introduced and nods his head and says _a pleasure to meet you_ and Dimitri wants to grab him by the arms and shake him.

He doesn’t. They’re whisked away and Dimitri doesn’t get the opportunity again until Edelgard tells them about the small mission that the house leaders are going on, off to the woods. He remembers this part. When he looks up and sees Claude, he thinks that Claude does too.

Edelgard goes ahead to scout and Dimitri looks toward Claude, his heart thumping in his chest. He doesn’t remember much, but he remembers his eyes. His sad smile. The way he looked at him.

He says, “I feel like I’ve been waiting to meet you my whole life.”

Claude looks at him for a moment, considering those words, before he smiles - but the smile isn’t one of happiness. He simply looks _weary_ , like he might cry all of a sudden, and he lets out a long, deep breath.

“I’ve been waiting to meet you for so many lives,” Claude says, his breath soft on the wind, “it hardly seems fair.”

“What do you mean?” Dimitri asks, but there isn’t time. Claude brings a finger to his lips and points to a disturbance in the brush a small distance off.

Bandits.

Afterward, there’s hardly time to get a word in. They meet the mercenaries who saved them and Dimitri knows her before she even opens her mouth, but he’s not sure how or why. He knows that he wants her approval and he jumps forward to introduce himself to her, temporarily forgetting about his moment earlier with Claude.

He tries to tell her about the wonders of Garreg Mach as they walk back to the monastery, much to the annoyance of her father - but it doesn’t matter. She’s listening to him intently, and also to Edelgard, and even to Claude when he interjects every now and again.

The mercenary trips over a loose stone in the path and Dimitri rushes to her aid.

“-careful, professor.”

“I’m fine,” she says, brushing him off - though hesitates, looking up at him. “‘Professor?’”

He shakes his head. Why did he say that? But Claude is watching him again, his expression for once (though Dimitri does not know him all that well, he doesn’t know why this seems to be an outlier) devoid of pleasure.

Byleth chooses to teach the Black Eagles and Dimitri supposes it’s for the best. He doesn’t mind Manuela - at least he knows her well enough, when he doesn’t really know this strange mercenary at all.

Dimitri barely makes it back to the common area before Claude is accosting him again, shoving him back into the empty Golden Deer classroom and checking behind them, as if ensuring that they weren’t followed.

“What's the meaning of this?” Dimitri asks, though he already knows the answer.

Claude’s hands are clenched into fists.

“You remember,” he says and it sounds like an accusation. “Tell me everything.”

When forced to confront the grey, swirling mass in his memory, Dimitri finds that he cannot. The more he tries to force the memories to the surface, the further they seem. He knows that _something_ is there. He knows that _something_ isn’t right. But without being able to focus precisely on it, it’s only given him headaches and nightmares.

He tells Claude so and Claude looks frustrated, but not entirely unsympathetic.

“It was like that for me too,” Claude says, shaking his head, “it gets better, clearer, the more you do it. I don’t know why - but that isn’t important right now.”

Claude seems a warrior then, and Dimitri thinks about Claude’s hand on his arm, burning the memory of his touch into him. It frightens him for reasons he doesn’t understand, and Claude isn’t helping, with his pacing and thoughtful expression.

He tries honesty, hoping that it will make Claude explain it to him.

“I don’t know what’s happening.”

“I know,” Claude reassures, pressing his hand to his chin as he thinks. “I don’t think that changes anything.”

“Tell me, then.”

“I don’t think I can.”

Frustration flares in him, overtaking the fear. He doesn’t see how this could be one of Claude’s pranks, not when it’s so deeply embedded in his mind that he thinks he might have been born with it, a defect that was misprinted into an imperfect copy.

“Why not?”

Claude bites his lip and leans back against one of the desks, staring down at the ground.

“I’ve tried before. I think you have to learn it for yourself.”

The frustration bleeds out and he’s still annoyed, but now he’s annoyed at whatever made Claude this way, whatever happened to put them on this path. Something thunders in his heart and it tastes like what he remembers blood to taste like.

“I remember,” he starts on a breath, letting it out in a rush, “ _Arcturus_. Your favorite star.”

Claude looks up at him, and Dimitri is trying _so_ hard to remember, trying _so_ hard to please him for reasons he doesn’t understand yet. When Claude smiles, it’s sad again, and Dimitri doesn’t know why.

Then, Claude asks: “Do you remember what happens when she picks Edelgard?”

Dimitri shakes his head and Claude reaches for his face, brushes his fingers along his chin. The touch is familiar, and it’s not. Claude has never touched him like this so early.

“Then you still have a ways to go.”

-

It isn’t linear. It isn’t a tangible thing that he can map out on a chalkboard, write in a story, think _this_ lead to _this_ , which became _this_. It comes and goes, fate and time woven and bound like a page in a book.

Then, the page is turned. He can’t read what happened before. He can’t deviate from what’s already written.

He dreams of Claude touching his chin. Claude’s hand on his arm. He dreams of Claude, trapped like a butterfly inside of a glass jar. Sometimes he’s on the outside - sometimes he’s trapped with him.

The fourth time, Byleth agrees to teach Dimitri’s class and Claude bounds up to him afterward, reaching for his hand.

“It’s going to be a good one,” he promises. “It’s always good when she picks you.”

Except it isn’t.

Miklan - or, the beast that _was_ Miklan - screams at the top of his tower and descends on him. Dimitri knows what to do, knows how to move his lance, but he knows how to fight a man. A beast is different.

A beast lashes his tail out, hammering against Dimitri’s leg and he falls off balance. A beast gets his teeth around Dimitri’s arm and _bites_ , and he feels the flesh tear and rend as the limb is ripped from his body. He’s cold. The shock makes him still, makes him stupid, and he feels the hot breath of the monster as it descends again, its jaws locking around his head and shoulders, and biting down.

He feels himself die.

And then he’s fine. 

Dimitri blinks as his heart starts again, his still-attached arm goes tense, and he shudders, a wave of revulsion and sickness crashing through him. He died - he’s dead - he’s alive? He wants to vomit, he wants to fall to his knees, he’s trembling and _wrong_ , and -

Byleth jumps in front of him and parries the blow from the beast.

“Focus, Dimitri!” She cries back at him and he doesn’t know how he _can_. He doesn’t know how anyone could. He squeezes his eyes shut tight and remembers the feeling of death clutching at his heart, seeping into his brain.

Later, Claude pours him tea and sighs.

“It might happen again,” he warns, “now that you can see it. Or it’ll happen to someone else and you’ll watch it - and then it’ll be undone.”

Dimitri’s head sinks into his arms and he tries to keep himself from trembling.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“Maybe we both are,” Claude offers unhelpfully. Dimitri peeks up at him from behind his sleeve and doesn’t know how he can be so _nonchalant_ about this, but he supposes, that’s Claude.

Still, Claude goes quiet for awhile after that and the only sound around them is the delicate chime of the steel spoon against the porcelain teacup as he stirs the sugar in. The way the table goes silent, Dimitri can tell that Claude is wrestling with a great thing, a heavy burden, and is considering unloading it. Dimitri isn’t sure if he wants him to, but he doesn’t want to dissuade him either.

He’ll love him, someday. It’s not there yet. He doesn’t feel it yet. But he thinks, there will be a time when all the right parts of the two of them collide and then Claude will show him the stars again from a peaceful meadow in southern Faerghus.

Until then, they have tea. They have - these short conversations, whispered to one another like handwritten notes in the margins.

“...my favorite,” Claude admits quietly, “is when she picks you. Doesn’t that sound self defeating?”

He laughs softly, but he’s talking more to himself than to Dimitri, and so Dimitri doesn’t respond quite yet and Claude continues.

“I should want to be chosen. I should want to win - but I don’t. I just want you to survive. And the only way you do is if…”

Dimitri closes his eyes.

“Do you ever die?” he asks softly, not sure if he even should.

“Sometimes.”

Dimitri doesn’t ask him to clarify.

It doesn’t end like he expects it to, this time. He remembers loving Claude, but that feels hazy, foggy like some faraway daydream he used to have when he was young. When his professor is here and radiant in the light of the goddess tower, Dimitri’s heart betrays him and he feels like he has no other choice.

Maybe he doesn’t.

-

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Dimitri insists, stepping after Claude. He’s seventeen again and Claude is cherry-cheeked and full of potential. The story is becoming clearer to him, but only at times when it doesn’t matter at all.

Claude whirls back on him, his jaw tense.

“It does,” he says.

“I’ll do it differently this time. I won’t leave.”

“You will,” Claude tells him, “and I’ll let you. Don’t you remember?”

He doesn’t - or rather, he _does_ , but it doesn’t seem right. He thinks that if he knew the truth, if he knew what would happen, he would deviate from it. And yet, he didn’t. All the times in the past that this happened, he followed a path, saw it through to the end, as if his fate wasn’t up to him.

“All that matters - the _only_ thing that ever changes is the choice,” Claude says, his voice heated with pent-up emotion that he rarely lets show. “ _We_ can’t change it. The siege will happen and even though you _know_ what’ll happen, you’ll leave. You’ll feel like you have to. And then…”

His memory is imperfect, but Claude’s implication is crystal clear. Dimitri breathes out a shaky breath and tries to remember.

“...then she kills me,” he says softly. “But what if this time, I win?”

Claude laughs, but it’s not his usual lilting laugh. This time it’s cruel, mocking, and Dimitri wants to pull away from it. How did he ever love him?

“Haven’t you learned by now? If she doesn’t pick you, you lose. You die a dog’s death at twenty-two, choking on your own blood, and I live my _entire life_ without you.”

The hallway is a lesson in silence. Dimitri falls back and sees it stretched before him, exactly the way that Claude has painted. The living, the dying, the war, the death, Edelgard’s face above his own, her axe in her hand.

He should have gone to Derdriu, he thinks. It could have been nice.

When Dimitri looks at him now, Claude looks perfect, as he always has. He knows every freckle on his face. He knows the sound of his footfalls. He knows the warmth of his mouth. He knows that Claude survives four times out of five, and he hopes that this is one of those times.

He finally asks the question he’s wanted to ask for three lifetimes now.

“How many times have you…?”

Claude smiles. There’s nothing joyful about it.

-

“I think she’s looking for something,” Claude tells him quietly as the war draws closer.

It’s difficult to pry himself away from his thoughts. He wasn’t at Remire - Claude was, this time - but he feels the fury hiding just underneath his skin, hot like a flame that boils in his gut. He knows that with time, that fury will be all that he has left, and Claude will watch him choose the anger again and again.

He closes his eyes, forces it away.

“What do you mean?”

“The professor. It has to be her, right?”

The faces in the flames, the walking experiments. The cult. Dimitri grits his teeth and remembers what they did to him, what they did to his father, and feels knots forming in his heart.

Claude continues as if he doesn’t notice, but he does.

“Even if her choice isn’t the catalyst - which it is - the only time we die as kids is when she’s with us, and it’s undone. I think she’s undoing it. I think she’s undoing _everything_ , each time it plays out.”

Dimitri’s headaches always start like this one does: tight at the top of his spine, pounding in his head. They used innocent people as _cannon fodder_. Poisoned an entire town. How could they just let that happen? Why didn't he stop it?

“Which means, she’s looking for something. She saves us as kids. Maybe she’s trying to save all of us as adults, too.”

Slowly, Dimitri catches hold of Claude’s train of thought, though it feels fleeting between his fingers. He grits his teeth. When was the last time he slept?

“You think… she remembers too?”

“I think she’s _causing_ it,” Claude finally says, his arms folded across his chest as he stares off, down the courtyard. “I think she has the power to do it. But I think that if we’re bound to our fates, then so is she, and she keeps going back and playing through the same steps over again as if it’ll turn out differently. She hasn’t learned.”

Dimitri swallows hard and squeezes his eyes shut tight to stave off the pain of the impending migraine.

“Maybe she thinks she can change it.”

“She can’t,” Claude asserts with finality in his tone, but then looks uneasy, “ _we_ can’t, anyway.”

Dimitri doesn’t respond. The headache is blooming in full now, like a drop of oil into water, billowing across his brain, corrupting every space it touches into pain. The inevitability feels hopeless. It’s easier to be angry, easier to let himself hate, to listen to the voices that are beginning to blossom in his mind, the voices which tell him that he has to end it, to kill all those responsible.

To kill -

He opens his eyes.

“What if we stop her?” he asks slowly, parceling the words out on his tongue. “The next time she picks me. After everything, we stop her from undoing it.”

Claude raises an eyebrow at him, skeptical but intrigued all the same.

“The only way to do that is to… well, you know.”

He does. But in that moment, it _feels_ right. She has killed him a dozen times, forced him to relive his tragedy even more, she has pushed him past the brink and saved him from it in equal measures. He has loved her, he has despised her, he has been a pawn to her for longer than he can remember. If the only way to end the cycle is to cut off the source, then he thinks, they can do it. It’s certainly _deserved_ , after what she’s put them through.

“Next time,” he promises. His head pounds and Claude looks uncertain, but nods.

“Next time,” Claude agrees.

-

They do not kill Byleth _next time_. The next time, Dimitri is facing off against Edelgard - his childhood friend, his enemy, the raging beast above him who seems somehow like the god she claims to hate. She falls like she always does. Her knees hit the floor like they always do.

Dimitri reaches out a hand like he always does.

“Why... do you even bother,” Edelgard says, through gritted teeth, clutching at her side where Dimitri knows the dagger is hidden, “it always ends the same -”

And then it’s over. She’s dead, but Dimitri hasn’t moved his weapon. Instead, it’s Byleth, behind him, her sword unfurled like a whip, her expression blank, but her shoulders tense.

This time, Dimitri does not love her.

“She knew too,” he tells Claude at the first delegation, when Claude is supposed to surprise him with news of his lineage and status as king of Almyra. He doesn’t have the patience to pretend to be surprised, and takes Claude to the first empty room he can, sharing the secret that he’s had to hold in his heart until now. “Edelgard. She knew.”

Claude is still recovering from the change in script, but this rattles him.

“You’re sure?” he asks, and Dimitri nods. He’s never been more sure of anything.

He tells Claude about what happened, the deviation from their inevitability, and Claude bites his lip, his brow furrowed.

“What do you think?” he asks when it’s over and Dimitri frowns, turning away.

He doesn’t know what he thinks. They had a plan, but now it feels… childish, when they don’t yet know the ramifications. Who else could know? Who else has lived this hell of repetition, trying again and again, only for the same four results?

Who will they be dooming if they chose to end it here?

Dimitri knows that there is no world in which both Edelgard and him survive. But if she’s trapped in this jar, the same as the two of them, then shouldn’t she get a say in it too? Shouldn’t she decide when to try to end the cycle?

It weighs at him, heavy, and he doesn’t respond. Claude can read him better than anyone anyway.

“You want to save her,” he says softly. Dimitri bites his lip. “Dimitri, you know -”

“-I know we’re tied to our fates, yes,” he says, closing his eye, “and it’s impossible to save all three of us. The only one who can change anything is her. But if that’s what she’s trying to do…”

“You want to let her?” Claude asks, and betrays none of his thoughts on the matter, not even to Dimitri, who can read him better than anyone after so many lives together.

He doesn’t know the answer to that. Maybe he doesn’t have to know. Dimitri slowly reaches out, his fingers on Claude’s thin wrist, and he sighs, letting himself feel, just for a moment, the comfortable warmth of him.

“I want to fall in love with you, slowly, over the next five years,” he winds up saying, his heart catching at the thought, “I want to grow old with you. I want to live our best futures together for as long as we possibly can… and then, when it’s over, I want to look forward to the day we get to do it all over again.”

Claude weakens, but doesn’t relent entirely. He doesn’t give in to Dimitri’s touch, not yet. He won’t, for some time.

“You don’t love me every time,” he warns quietly.

He’s right.

When Dimitri doesn’t answer, Claude pulls away and takes a deep breath, unable to look Dimitri in the eye.

“You die every time she doesn’t pick you. I die sometimes when she picks Edelgard. It’s even worse when I live - knowing that you’re gone, cold and rotting in a grave somewhere and I just have to _wait_ and hope that maybe next time… you don’t have to go through that, Dimitri. You never have.” 

With that, the room is quiet and Dimitri feels as his heart wakes up to the idea. He admires the curve of Claude’s nose, the wave in his hair and he thinks that he could love him. He wonders if that’s enough.

“...is it worth it?” he finally asks, puncturing the silence of the room. “That one-in-four.”

Claude doesn’t answer and Dimitri forges on, unsteady in his path.

“I think it is. It is to me. I’ll gladly die three times, if it means you’ll be in my arms in the fourth. I’ll gladly go through it all for one more lifetime with you. As many times as it takes, until our dear professor gets it right.”

There’s a pause. Claude falters, clearly moved by Dimitri’s words and looks up at him. Dimitri sees him as he saw him the first time, all those lifetimes ago, with his bright eyes and sharp collarbones. He sees him and thinks, _I could love you_.

Claude reaches for his hand.

“...as many times as it takes,” he repeats slowly.

His touch is electric.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I personally _love_ time-fucky stories and I don't know why it's taken me so long to write one for a game where you can _literally_ manipulate time, but hey.
> 
> I wrote out a long convoluted explanation for what's actually going on throughout everything, but I feel like that took away from the ~mystery~ of the story so I've omitted it. I'm happy to share if anyone is curious though!
> 
> Check me out [@unraelated](https://twitter.com/unraelated) for more content!


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